


We All Become

by Dragestil



Series: We are Broken, We are Whole [3]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of rough sex, Off-screen Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:58:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4515807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragestil/pseuds/Dragestil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the events of Broken, Ross is forced to face the reasons behind his less than healthy relationship with Tom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We All Become

“Smith,” Trott whispered, nudging the kelpie sleeping on the floor with his foot.

“5 more minutes.”

“Smith, come on. We’ve gotta go pick up Ross.”

That roused him, and he was soon pulling on his jacket and shoes. The selkie followed him down from the bell tower to the slick car parked out front. Smith barely waited for the door to be shut before he was tearing away from the pavement and u-turning in the middle of the empty road to speed toward the more rundown part of the city. He ignored the pull of lost souls, denied himself easy targets for a lone figure he knew waited for him - for both of them in the car. Soon enough, he was screeching to a halt beside a familiar statue holding an unlit cigarette and perched on the railing of some steps.

“Get in,” Smith said as one of the rear doors opened itself.

“I’d rather not,” Ross replied, not looking at the car or its occupants.

“And we’d rather you didn’t do this to yourself, but we’ve all gotta make accommodations,” the kelpie muttered, slipping from the driver’s seat and crossing the sidewalk to the gargoyle’s side in a few long strides. “Up you get, mate. It’s time to get you home.”

“What’s the point?”

“Jesus,” Smith groaned as he glanced back to the car. “Hey, Trott, you wanna give me a hand here?”

Independently, they all wondered when the familiar comfort of the night became such a vile thing. There had always been rough patches occasionally, but now it was more often than not that Trott and Smith found themselves hunting the streets in the late hours to find their other partner. Sometimes, they tried to talk about it. They never got far.

“Ross,” Trott sighed, appearing at Smith’s side and offering Ross a hand, “let’s go home.”

For his protests, Ross was surprisingly easy to move. He stood at the selkie’s encouragement and allowed himself to be led into the backseat of the car. He didn’t reciprocate the way Trott leaned against him, rubbed at his tense shoulders, but didn’t pull away either. He stared past the back of Smith’s head out the windscreen. The kelpie’s quiet singing was the only sound on the ride home, and it was more to calm himself than for his passengers’ sakes. When they pulled up in front of the cathedral, he waited until the other two had already begun the climb up the scaffolding before exiting the car himself. He followed after his lovers only once he felt grounded again.

In the drafty bell tower, Ross sat hunched on a table in just his boxers. Trott studied him carefully before he began to wipe away the blood dried into the gargoyle’s stoney skin. Much of it was smeared heavily, and the selkie knew Ross had tried to get rid of the evidence earlier. Smith put a hand on Trott’s shoulder to get him to pause in his ministrations.

“How many days this past month have we done this?”

“I don’t know. A few,” Ross mumbled.

“A few?” Smith chuckled, though it sounded aching. “Yeah, and I’m a completely level-headed, reasonable guy.”

“What’s it matter?”

“You know we don’t just hang around you because you are a fantastic shag - even if you are a fantastic shag. Well...okay maybe we did before, but I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say we’re beyond that point now.”

“Ross, please tell us what’s been going on. We just want to help you, and we can’t if you won’t tell us anything.”

Ross stared at the dusty floorboards. He hated this weakness of his, the inability to protect the ones that mattered in his life. He chewed his lip with a furrowed brow and wondered if he could maybe stay still for long enough to become inanimate once more. _“I’ll never want you like they do,”_ he heard Tom say in his mind. But why would that be true? None of the three had ever been all that explicit with their feelings, but it had never seemed necessary.

“I’ve just been talking with Tom.”

“Mate, I’m not sure if I’m just really unfamiliar with the definition of talking or not, but I don’t think that it usually involves coming home covered in someone else’s blood.”

“If you’ve been fighting with him, you can tell us. We may not be made of stone, but we can hold our own. You don’t need to go against him all by yourself. The three of us could take him.”

“It’s not like that,” Ross murmured.

“What is it like then?!” Smith asked, frustration seeping quickly into his voice. “We don’t care if you’re fucking him or something, we just want to know you’re okay. Don’t know if you’ve noticed but we actually give a shit about you!”

“Smith,” Trott hissed.

“Don’t ‘Smith’ me, Trott! I don’t want to be woken up one night to go pick him up and find him in fucking pieces all over the pavement. Clearly he doesn’t get that though because he won’t fucking tell us why half the time he’s just fine and half the time he’s gone off to some abandoned building to get bloodied up!”

Ross caught the kelpie’s burning gaze and looked about ready to question the sentiment. He was stopped by Smith’s hands cupping the back of his head and pulling him into a hot kiss. It was just as bruising as any of his kisses with Tom, but felt so different too. There was desperation and urgency and something more than carnal hunger. When Smith finally pulled back at Trott’s hand on his shoulder, the tallest of the trio was panting, and his eyes were wild.

“Please don’t tell me you never realised,” he said quietly.

“Realised what?”

“Ross,” Trott interjected, keeping his steadying hand on Smith, “what he’s trying to say is that we love you. We didn’t figure we needed to say it or anything. We thought you knew.”

Silence filled the room. Nothing has gone to plan. It was too late to take things back though, and that would only lead to more lies, more avoidance of the issues at hand. The trio traded glances for a long while until Ross finally made up his mind.

“Tom and I,” he began, though he paused quickly to try to organise what he wanted to say, “have this thing. He knows what it’s like to have no purpose. He knows what it’s like to be broken, useless. So we,” he paused again to take a steadying breath, “so we meet up on a rooftop sometimes. Neither of us are all that fragile, so we fight and the winner fucks the loser. Sometimes we don’t fight, just fuck. Sometimes we...we punish each other.”

“Jesus, Ross, if you needed to hit someone, you could’ve told us. Hell, if Trott wouldn’t, I’d take it rough for you.”

“I can’t protect you then.”

“And this is protecting us? Even when you’re with us, you’re gone half the time. And anyway we don’t want your ‘protection,’ mate. We just want you to be happy - god, I sound fuckin’ sappy, don’t I? Look at what you’re doing to me!” Smith said, laughing faintly. “Really though, you don’t need to act like some big, tough, unfeeling whatever for our sakes. If you feel like shit, let us know.”

“We can take care of you, too. You don’t have to go picking fights with a fallen angel just to feel things, Ross. I mean, unless that’s what you want. Is it?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence threatened to take hold of the space once more, but Smith cleared his throat to stop it.

“Well I don’t expect you to figure it out just sitting there all night, and I’m fucking exhausted. Let’s all have a nice sleep and sort this shit out in the morning, yeah?”

“Alright,” Ross answered, slipping off the table and heading toward the mattresses on the floor that served as their bed.

The three made themselves comfortable quickly, with Trott and Smith on either side of the gargoyle to wrap him in their limbs. In the familiar darkness of their makeshift flat, it was easy to forget their frustrations and anxieties. They exchanged lazy kisses that warmed much more thoroughly than their ragged blankets.

“Ross,” Smith breathed, fending off sleep’s advances momentarily.

“Yeah?”

“You said you were useless; what about us? You’ve saved our arses plenty of times. Don’t tell anyone, but we need you around. Who else is gonna keep me from killing Trott in a thrilling debate of fresh- versus saltwater?”

For the first time in months, the bell tower felt like home. Ross could feel Smith’s thousand watt grin more than he could see it, but it was all the same. He kissed his more reckless lover before giving him a wink.

“Keep it down or he might hear you. Gotta let sleeping fish lie.”


End file.
